OAKMONT, Pa. – Oakmont Country Club’s archives are a vast treasure trove of golf’s greatest moments, expansive in its depth and scope, documenting one of America’s most prestigious clubs that has hosted some of the most memorable tournaments and crowned some of the most legendary champions.

Yet, when this reporter gave the club a call last December, they didn’t have the info I was searching for.

“We actually don’t have much on that,” the club’s historian Dave Moore explained, likely confused by the obscurity of my inquiry. “As you might expect, it’s pretty much all Johnny Miller.”

Ah, yes. Miller and the most historic round in major championship golf. A final-round 63 in 1973 that set a U.S. Open scoring record and has held the title, depending on who you talk to, as the greatest final round in major championship history ever since. A round that defied what the U.S. Open has been since its inception: The toughest, most brutal examination in golf. Miller made a career off that round, for good reason. He not only conquered the sport’s most formidable venue but dismantled it, coming back from a six-shot deficit to claim his first major title.

What’s forgotten from that '73 U.S. Open, and what I didn’t know until I started researching it, is that the greatest round in major championship golf was almost usurped by an enigmatic, mercurial figure who came within a few inches of glory that would have changed the course of his life.

This is his story.

The subject is a one-time PGA TOUR champion, the winner of the inaugural Q-School in 1965 and subsequent TOUR Rookie of the Year in 1966. Far from a scrub, but also far from the company that he kept at Oakmont in '73.

A cursory look at the leaderboard, more than 50 years later, shows a leaderboard of the who’s who of that era. Jack Nicklaus, Arnold Palmer and Lee Trevino tied for fourth. Tom Weiskopf finished third. Miller won. In the USGA’s official film of the event, great attention is paid to each. The man who finished second? Not so much. The film abruptly ends when Miller finishes out on 18, around two hours before play actually finished, and the runner-up nearly holed a chip to tie Miller.

Golf history is filled with what-could-have-beens and players who came so close to glory, only to fade into anonymity.

John Schlee might be the most interesting golfer on that list. A man who possessed enough eccentricities to thrive in today’s modern social media era but got little shine back in the ‘70s. Yes, Schlee is the man who nearly upended Miller’s U.S. Open. Schlee finished one back and had plenty of reason to believe it should have been him.

“It bothered him still,” said Tom Bertrand in an interview with PGATOUR.COM. Bertrand was Schlee’s right-hand man later in life, building up a teaching business alongside him.

We’ll get to those particulars later, and how excruciatingly close Schlee came to holding the trophy himself. First, we have to acknowledge that if Charlie Cartwright had pressed charges, Schlee might never have had the chance.

Schlee was born in Kremmling, Colorado, on June 2, 1939, as John Harold Tabor, but he moved to Seaside, Oregon, at an early age when his parents split. He followed his mother, who went west and remarried to Carl Schlee, hence the last name change. For reasons that aren’t entirely clear, John Schlee also went by Jack for his entire upbringing, with many who knew him unaware that his actual name was John. An early indicator of Schlee’s vacillating behavior.

Schlee was known to be a troublemaker and a thief as a kid. In the book, “Chasing Greatness: Johnny Miller, Arnold Palmer and the Miracle at Oakmont,” co-authors Adam Lazarus and Steven Schlossman wrote that in Schlee’s high school days, the school principal was once so fed up with Schlee’s behavior that they pushed for several students to blindfold Schlee and force him to fish banana peels out of a toilet with his mouth. Lazarus and Schlossman’s book was a great guide for this article, one of the lone accessible and in-depth texts that document Schlee’s life.

“He was probably one of those kids that was always in a fight,” Bertrand said, “or seemed to be anyway.”

The book revealed that Schlee would regularly shake down the local paperboy for cash and was siphoning gas from lumber trucks to fuel his souped-up hot rod. He would also steal golf balls from Seaside Golf Course, owned by Cartwright, to either play or sell for cash. Cartwright didn’t care much as he had a soft spot for Schlee, who had befriended Cartwright’s son and become a de facto part of their family. But it nearly came back to bite Schlee in 1957. In need of money to play the Southern Oregon Open and hopefully jumpstart his pro career, Schlee stole hundreds of golf balls from Cartwright’s shed in the middle of the night and sold them to nearby Gearhart Golf Links. It wasn’t until the next morning that Cartwright found out and called the police, not suspecting it was Schlee because he had never been that bold or stolen that many balls. Eventually, the police figured out it was Schlee and tracked him down at Rogue Valley Country Club, host of the Southern Oregon Open, where Schlee was about to tee off. Schlee was arrested on the putting green of the course with police pushing for charges. Cartwright declined to do so, instead telling Schlee he needed to enlist in the military to acquire some discipline. Schlee agreed.

“I was a pretty bad actor as a kid,” Schlee would later say.

Schlee’s life had a few of these make-or-break moments. He was running out of money early in his pro career until he turned up at the inaugural PGA TOUR Qualifying Tournament in 1965 and won to earn immediate TOUR status. He played well enough in ‘66 to earn Golf Digest’s Rookie of the Year award. Among the financial backers that Schlee had was New York Yankees legend Mickey Mantle, who helped pay for Schlee to play on TOUR and was a frequent playing partner to Schlee. But by ‘69, Schlee was again on the brink of quitting because of financial hardship.

That’s when a chance encounter with Schlee’s hero Ben Hogan turned things around. The two each frequented Preston Trail Golf Club in Dallas but typically kept their distance. Schlee had asked Hogan years earlier to help him with his game, but Hogan, notoriously irritable, rebuffed the request. This time, though, Hogan asked Schlee to play with him. By the end of their round, Hogan was doling out swing advice, and the two began working together. It was particularly notable because Hogan rarely gave anyone the time of day, but Schlee would become one of the few people that Hogan let in. In his later years, Schlee opened a teaching school based on Hogan’s famous swing fundamentals. Bertrand would later write a book, providing a comprehensive document of Hogan’s swing philosophies, as passed down by Schlee.

And it was those fundamentals that Schlee learned from Hogan that sparked the next revival of Schlee’s career.

Which brings us back to Oakmont.

A winner at the Sony Open in Hawaii earlier in the season gave Schlee plenty of confidence entering the U.S. Open. He was 1-over and six shots off the lead entering the weekend, but a Saturday 67 vaulted Schlee into a tie for the lead and secured him a spot alongside Palmer in the penultimate pairing Sunday. Schlee had outplayed Palmer in Hawaii months earlier, so he felt confident in his ability to do it again.

That took a hit, though, when Schlee hit three balls off the first tee and made double bogey. Schlee eagled the par-5 fourth to stay in it and had surpassed Palmer. Late on Sunday, Schlee was the only golfer who could catch Miller. That’s when the game of inches unfolded. He burned the edge with a makeable birdie putt on the 17th hole, which kept him one back of Miller heading to the 72nd hole. Knowing he needed birdie to force a playoff and draw Miller back out onto the course after a tense two-hour wait, Schlee hit the fairway at the par-4 18th. Go time. His approach landed on the green but bounded into the rough, a slight misjudgment of the distance and spin. Now facing a 45-foot chip, Schlee hit a perfect 44-foot shot that settled just short of the hole and crowned Miller the champion.

“Those tee shots (at No. 1) ... that was what bothered him the most,” Bertrand said, who listened to Schlee reflect on his missed opportunity a handful of times.

Schlee’s close call is hardly unique. Nearly every week, at least one golfer could credibly say they were a few inches from victory. But Miller’s triumph and Schlee’s disappointment detail the starkest and most brutal difference those margins can produce. Miller went on to win one more major, but his career was defined by the Sunday at Oakmont. Schlee, meanwhile, continued to play solid golf for several years, but never got that close again. He had back surgery in 1975 and knee surgery in 1976 after falling through his roof while doing home repairs (he was quite the handyman, according to Bertrand). He finished T8 at the Masters in 1977 but sprained his thumb in the process, which derailed his season. He then fell outside the top 100 and lost his card.

"There is the biggest small word in the English language – 'If,'" said former Masters champion Charles Coody. "If he had won (at Oakmont), who knows?"

The close call, as it turns out, also robbed us of quite a character.

Schlee’s personality was controversial. Known to be quite blunt, those who knew him either loved him or hated him. Had Schlee played in this era, his eccentricities would’ve sparked similar feelings.

Among them was his obsession with astrology. Schlee was known to print out other players’ horoscopes and stick them in their lockers. He kept a running list of all TOUR pros and their birthdays. At the U.S. Open at Oakmont, Schlee told reporters, “This is a good week for Gemini (Schlee’s sign). Mars is in conjunction with my natal moon. My information was fed to a computer, which didn’t know I was a golfer, and it said: ‘This is an exceptional month. You will do good in athletic events outside.’”

Anytime Schlee played well, he was asked about his horoscope. So much so, it became a running joke around the locker room. At the 1974 PGA Championship, Trevino said: “(Kermit) Zarley believes in the Bible, Schlee believes in astrology. I believe in making more birdies than bogeys.”

In an interview for this story, Trevino remembered Schlee’s obsession with astrology but mostly remembered him as someone who “really worked tirelessly at it. I mean, nobody hit more balls. … The thing about John Schlee is he didn’t mind trying things.”

That led to a curiosity and willingness to experiment and create new equipment trends. At points, Schlee used triangular-headed woods, and he was one of the first to use adjusted weights in his drivers as well as the Wonder Shaft. He was also known to have tried as many putting methods as you can think of.

Schlee transitioned to a teaching pro in his later years, splitting time between coaching and his PGA TOUR Champions schedule. Over the years, various TOUR pros came to see Schlee, including Phil Mickelson and Tom Lehman. It was during that time that Schlee acquired around 600 discounted Taylor Raylor putters from TaylorMade, which Schlee thought would be teaching tools but suddenly became hot commodities when a TOUR pro won with it in 1988, and Schlee owned the only ones in existence.

Suddenly, Schlee was getting requests from all over, asking for one of the few remaining in existence, including from “Jeopardy” host Alex Trebek and President George H.W. Bush. Schlee also sent one to Michael Jordan, hoping he might use it, though there’s no evidence he ever did.

Schlee’s later years were marred by Alzheimer's disease, which took hold of Schlee in the early '90s. So obsessed with golf and his pursuit of playing professionally, Schlee had largely avoided many personal relationships. By this time, he and Bertrand were no longer close, Schlee had split with his wife, and he didn’t speak to his only daughter. He died on his 61st birthday, June 2, 2000. A Golf World obituary described Schlee in his final moments as “frail and poor and alone in a California hospital.” There was no pageantry.

“Complicated is a good word to describe him,” Bertrand said. “And, like, he was so close. He was so close to being what he wanted to be.”

Would a win at the U.S. Open at Oakmont have changed that?

“Yeah, I think so,” Bertrand said.

It’s a reminder of what weeks like the U.S. Open can mean. Whoever wins at Oakmont this year will be remembered forever. They’ll be documented in Oakmont’s archives, live on in our minds and become what they wanted to be.

And there will be others who fall short.

“When you win a major championship, they put you in a completely different category,” Trevino told PGATOUR.COM. “I was just talking to a couple people, and I said, ‘I got to do an interview here about John Schlee,’ and they said, ‘Who is that?’ and that’s just what happens.”

Cameron Morfit contributed to this report.